They're pro-life, pro-gun, pro-Jesus—meet the new class of Democrats

Last week, the 109th Congress was finally put out of its misery, having sputtered through 103 days in session as one of the most ineffectual legislative bodies in our nation's history. In January, eight new Democratic senators and 40 new Democratic congressmen will show up to take control of the 110th. To get them there, the party had to open up its big blue tent—so much so that if you take a closer look, you start seeing red. Call them Zell Miller Democrats. Eleven have an A rating from the National Rifle Association, an indicator that used to serve as a convenient shorthand for insane person. If Charlton Heston likes you that much, the thinking went, it can't be just about marksmanship—you're probably also a Christian fundamentalist, anti-dancing pro-tobacco gay-hater.

But it's Howard Dean's Democratic Party now, and the successful new wave of Democratic candidates includes a good number of folks who come remarkably close to matching that description. There's an ongoing debate among Dems over whether the party sold its soul by running pro-life, pro-gun, pro-prayer-everywhere candidates in red districts, and it remains to be seen precisely how conservative the freshman class will turn out to be—as you may have heard, it's not uncommon for candidates to say stuff just to get elected. The Republican message machine certainly hasn't made up its mind yet, claiming in practically the same breath that Nancy Pelosi has a nipple ring and that the election was still a win for conservatives because the next senator from Montana will have a flattop.

However it shakes out, there are more than a few members of the Democratic class of '06 who will be avoiding awkward moments with Barney Frank in the cloakroom. Here's your Radar guide to some of the most unlikely new members of the Party of Death:

Jason Altmire, Pennsylvania's 4th District

According to his campaign website, "Jason Altmire supports comprehensive reform and will fight for full disclosure requirements on all lobbying activities, curbing lobbyist-sponsored junkets, eliminating influence peddling on Capitol Hill, and strengthening enforcement and oversight of House ethics rules." Altmire would know how to do it: His last job was as a—wait for it—lobbyist for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, where he pulled off neat tricks like bringing in roughly $4 million in earmarks for the hospital, which were slipped into a bill by Sen. Arlen Specter just weeks after Altmire and other hospital executives donated $74,000 to Specter's campaign. Abramoff would be proud. For good measure, Altmire wants to ban abortion except in cases of incest or when necessary for the health of the mother, wants to allow citizens to carry concealed guns, would "greatly reduce" welfare spending, and believes the U.S. should stop supporting the United Nations.

---

Bob Casey, Senator from Pennsylvania

Casey, another NRA A-lister, is a prominent anti-abortion Democrat in the tradition of his father, who was famously barred from giving a pro-life speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention. Casey Jr. continued in his dad's footsteps, though he's solidly a moderate Democrat in other respects—he supports civil unions and opposes a gay marriage amendment to the Constitution.

---

Christopher Carney, Pennsylvania's 10th District

At first glance, Carney, a Lt. Commander in the Navy Reserve and international security expert at Penn State University, seems like a run-of-the-mill moderate Democrat. He says he "do[es] not favor abortion" but believes in "access to comprehensive reproductive health care," a formulation that could pass as code for pro-choice, and positions himself as an environmentalist. But he's also a hero of the lunatics who insist that Iraq and Al Qaeda were working together prior to 9/11. During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to the New Yorker, Carney was asked by the Under Secretary of State Douglas Feith—one of the White House's fiercest neocons—to sift through intelligence data for a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Lo and behold, he found one: "Carney ... told the CIA officials that ... Saddam's relationship with Al Qaeda was serious and that it dated back to the terror group's early days in Sudan," wrote Jeffrey Goldberg.

After the invasion, when the lack of weapons of mass destruction dramatically increased pressure on the White House to come up with some reason for the war, Feith asked Carney to revisit the evidence, and once again, Carney delivered: "In late February 2004, Christopher Carney made an astonishing discovery," Hayes wrote. It turns out one of Hussein's Fedayeen officer's shared a name with an Al Qaeda fixer who was present at a 9/11 planning session, but, as the Washington Post later reported, was ultimately a different person altogether.

---

Joe Donnelly, Indiana's 2nd District

Apparently, the only reason Donnelly isn't a Republican is that the Democrats recruited him first. He opposes abortion, supports extending the Bush tax cuts (though he makes an exception for the top one percent of earners), wants to get rid of the estate tax, and opposes gay marriage, dodging the issue of an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution in one debate by saying, "I've not said anything on the constitutional or federal level, of supporting it, because we have two layers of protection in place." When it comes to stem-cell research, he says, "I believe in pushing the frontier, but in not damaging the embryos," meaning he'd rather let unused embryos sit in refrigeration than be used to create stem-cell lines. He agreed with his opponent, Republican incumbent Chris Chocola, that the United States shouldn't set a deadline for getting out of Iraq, that the Patriot Act is great, and that universal health care is a bad idea.

2 | NEXT PAGE >>

READ MORE
• Q&A: Voluntary Human Extinction
• Bogies: The World's Worst Awards
• Today's Top Stories

Photos, from top: JasonAltmire.com; GettyImages.com; Wikipedia.com; DonnellyForUSCongress.com